[No surviving envelope]
I meant to tell you, but it slipped my mind in the midst of other and more important matters, thatEmpson, WilliamTSE dines in company with;a2 I was to dine with Bill Empson and some friendsSansom, Katherine;a1 of his (whoSansom, George;a1 turned out to be one Sir George and Lady Sansom, commercial attaché in Tokyo, just going to Boston to give Lowell lectures, quite charming people:1 weHayward, JohnEmpson, TSE and Sansoms call on;d5 all called on John Hayward after dinner, but I had no private conversation with him) and therefore should not be able to write last night.2 I am NOT assuming that you will be disappointed in receiving no letter from me at tea time to-day; I am merely explaining the breach of a habit; you know that I always want to write you a letter on the next evening after I have seen you.
Welltravels, trips and plansEH's 1934–5 year in Europe;b4TSE's 6–8 September Campden weekend;e7, there has been another weekend, and no two are ever quite the same – or ever will be – there would always be some difference to mark each one out from the rest. I was not very happy on Friday or Saturday! you did not seem cross – I only know from your saying so that you were – you suppress your feelings so alarmingly well that I was only aware that you were depressed and unhappy about something – I could not have guessed (or ought I to have done?) that you were also vexed with me – and you seemed rather far away. I don’t think I should have dared to ask you what the matter was, though I should probably have referred to it in writing, because I should never wish to try to beg confidences from you, because you know best what you wish to tell. As for my own contribution to your annoyance – a small matter in comparison to your domestic trouble – I think I shall in future know better how not to offend a very sensitive person: though I think it was largely that I expressed myself unfortunately, and I still feel that there was something true behind what I said, which I can probably dig out and put into different words which will convey my meaning and prove acceptable. But I shall leave that for a little later: at all events I didn’t mean to say what I seem to have said.
IHale, Emilyfamily;w4EH's relations with aunt and uncle;a6 find it useful myself, in my own troubles, to see them as simply particular cases of general difficulties – it helps to get a detached view. I mean, you will of course recognise that your unhappiness over certain matters with your aunt is such as frequently occurs between people in such a relationship. AHale, Irene (née Baumgras)EH's relations with;a8 person like Mrs. Hale, even though she wear [sic] one out, is very much easier to handle really, because relations with her are so one-sided – you can control them yourself. ButPerkins, Edith (EH's aunt)her relationship with EH analysed;b7 Mrs. Perkins, it seems to me, wants to be something to you that she cannot be – it was a very pathetic aspect. I mean, she wants to take the place of a mother – what makes the particular complication, I should say, is the combination of dependence upon you with an unconscious desire to dominate. (Of course, I know that even a real parent can combine those qualities, but perhaps with her the unconscious awareness that it is a substitute-relationship makes her more liable to assert it by the wrong feelings rather than by the right ones. Of course she has never had the slightest training in self-analysis, or recognising her motives; and nobody’s motives are so pure that they need no examination.)
You will, I hope, tell me whenever you feel that I have said anything about a relative of yours (or a friend for that matter) which is impertinent; because unless you do I shall never know how far to go in the way of frankness; I should try to keep within limits, because even if I was convinced that I was right, it is no good telling people things that merely irritate them. Though of the two, I would really rather hurt you deliberately than out of stupidity.
You will never really come to a full and happy understanding with your aunt; she is not conscious enough. On the other hand, you have to some extent to behave as if she could understand. Of the two, it is more important that you should be able to feel loving towards her than that you should make her happy; and there are situations in which one has to choose. I mean that you cannot subdue yourself to another person, in a kind of make-believe, without storing up venom against that person – it doesn’t matter how good you are, it’s just a natural law. ItMcPherrin, Jeanettedisliked by Edith Perkins;d3 mustPerkins, Edith (EH's aunt)dislikes Jeanette McPherrin;b8 be made clear, surely, between you and your aunt, that the fact that you have a dear friend whom your aunt does not like3 is regrettable, but that such situations are common enough, that for there to be a strong feeling on the subject is just silly – you are sorry about it but you are going to be serene – grief must have limits somewhere – if your aunt chooses to grieve about it to excess that is a tyrannous grief, and you are not to grieve beyond reason at her grieving. In fact, it is none of her business to feel so strongly. Even husband and wife should not have such power over each other, as that attitude towards each others’ friends would imply.
I know how bad it is for one to subdue oneself to a weaker person – it is much more of a strain than to subdue oneself to a stronger person. Not to hurt people is not the most important thing, and furthermore one does not make people happy in that way. One’s capacity for making a person happy only exists in relation to that person’s capacity for being made happy by oneself – and that is something one must take the measurement of, and be reconciled to.4
I don’t think that so far I have added anything to what I said in the field, but thinking it over again may get me further in time. As I said then, I am sure that you would always be perfectly loyal to Jean, or to any friend; what is in question is your loyalty to yourself. and I know how hard that can be.
OurBurnt Nortonthe moment in the rose-garden;a3 being in theEnglandBurnt Norton, Gloucestershire;d5TSE remembers visiting;a1 rose-garden at Burnt Norton is one of the permanent moments for me.5 and for the moment in the garden at Stamford House in the evening, and all such moments, I can never express my gratitude – and I want another word than that socially wornout ‘gratitude’ to express such deep feelings of recognition of all your goodness and patience with me. I receive so much more than I can give.
TomorrowAquinas Society;a1 nightBelgion, Montgomeryto Garrigou-Lagrange lecture;a8 I have to go to hear theGarrigou-Lagrange, Réginald;a1 Revd. Père Garrigou-Lagrange O.P. who is a great swell among the Dominican philosophers in France; he is lecturing to the Aquinas Society,6 and I go with Belgion, andO'Sullivan, Richard;a1 meet him at Richard O’Sullivan (K.C.)’s afterwards.7 OnMorleys, theTSE's September 1935 week with;f3 Thursday morning, for your information, I go to the Morleys’, Pike’s Farm, Lingfield, Surrey, for the rest of the week.
Yourflowers and floraroses;c7their emotionally disturbing scent;a5 flowers are blooming and beautiful on my table. You must have gone out long before breakfast to pick them. And the withered buttonholes are filed, as usual, in your last letter. Now I shall see about changing the scent before lunching with Stephen Spender; the port glasses must wait till tomorrow – there is no hurry, if it will do for me to bring them. I am vexed at having given such a persistent wrong impression of my tastes in perfumes. Itflowers and floraviolets;d1emotionally disturbing;a2 isn’t that I dislike roses or violets, as you persist in thinking. It is merely that they are too emotionally disturbing for me to have about my own room for myself; andflowers and florasweet peas;c9effect of their scent on TSE;a2 as for sweet peas, I have to avoid them altogether, though and because that is my favourite scent. So now can you maintain that I dislike sweet peas? I got you scent because I thought all ladies liked to have scent – not because I need to smell it! A pleasant scent is a very nice addition to women to whom one is indifferent, but quite unnecessary for you so far as I am concerned. Still, it would please me to give you something you like, and to be aware of your using it. And you are not to say that I dislike scent, either; so make of this what you can.
This letter is written in the cold light of morning, so that you may have it for breakfast.
I have not been preaching.
1.GeorgeSansom, George Sansom (1883–1965), British commercial counsellor in Tokyo, 1926–39. HisSansom, Katherine wife was Katharine Sansom (1883–1998), journalist; author of Living in Tokyo (1937). Knighted in 1935, Sansom was elected in 1947 Knight Grand Cross of the Order of the British Empire. After the war, he became the first Director of the Far Eastern Institute at Columbia University. Works include Japan: A Short Cultural History (1931); History of Japan (3 vols, 1958–64). See Gordon Daniels, ‘Sir George Sansom (1883–1965): Historian and Diplomat’, Britain and Japan 1859–1991: Themes and Personalities, ed. Sir Hugh Cortazzi and Gordon Daniels (1991), 277–88.
2.The party dined at Schmidt’s on Charlotte Street, London, on Mon. 9 Sept.
3.Jeanette McPherrin.
4.TSEPerkins, Edith (EH's aunt)in TSE's private opinion;b4n to McPherrin, 31 Dec. 1935 (Letters 7, 876–7): ‘I parted from Mrs. Perkins on the best of terms – in fact I am still wondering why she formed such a good opinion of me. I seem to have got onto her right, or sentimental side. ButHale, Emilyfamily;w4EH's relations with aunt and uncle;a6n the fact is that Mrs. P. is fairly intelligent about Emily’s interests except where she herself comes in. She said, for instance, that she thought it would be better for E. to be somewhere else than Boston, because it was so much better for her not to be able to go to see her mother; and she also seemed to understand that it was much better for her to have a job, and preferably the right kind of job…
‘Still I am not happy about Emily being becalmed in Boston between the Perkins’s, and Miss Ware (!) and so near to her mother. And somehow I don’t feel that Dr. Perkins, that loveable schoolboy, is any too good for her either, intellectually. Emily has such respect for her elder relatives that one dare not do anything about it. If you could inveigle her out west, it would help.’
5.This is the first mention of the visit to Burnt Norton. BN: ‘Footfalls echo in the memory / Down the passage which we did not take / Towards the door we never opened / Into the rose-garden. My words echo / Thus, in your mind. […] To be conscious is not to be in time / But only in time can the moment in the rose-garden […] Be remembered; involved with past and future. / Only through time time is conquered.’
6.RéginaldGarrigou-Lagrange, Réginald Garrigou-Lagrange, OP (1877–1964), Dominican priest; leading Catholic Thomist theologian; author of Le Sens Commun: La Philosophie de l'être et les formules dogmatiques (3rd edn, Paris, 1922), and Les Trois Conversions et les trois voies (1933): both in TSE library. He spoke under the auspices of the Aquinas Society at the Temple, London, on ‘Le Premier Regard de l'intelligence et la contemplation’.
7.RichardO'Sullivan, Richard O’Sullivan, KC, KSG (1888–1963), barrister, wrote on the Christian origin of the Common Law of England. He was founder of the Sir Thomas More Society.
4.MontgomeryBelgion, Montgomery (‘Monty’) Belgion (1892–1973), author and journalist: see Biographical Register.
4.WilliamEmpson, William Empson (1906–84), poet and critic: see Biographical Register.
6.RéginaldGarrigou-Lagrange, Réginald Garrigou-Lagrange, OP (1877–1964), Dominican priest; leading Catholic Thomist theologian; author of Le Sens Commun: La Philosophie de l'être et les formules dogmatiques (3rd edn, Paris, 1922), and Les Trois Conversions et les trois voies (1933): both in TSE library. He spoke under the auspices of the Aquinas Society at the Temple, London, on ‘Le Premier Regard de l'intelligence et la contemplation’.
3.IreneHale, Irene (née Baumgras) Hale, née Baumgras, widow of Philip Hale, celebrated as the prolific and influential music critic of the Boston Herald. Irene Hale, who was herself an accomplished pianist, had studied at the Cincinnati Conservatory of Music, where she gained the Springer Gold Medal 1881, and continued with her studies in Europe under Raif and Moritz Mosckowski: she later wrote music under the name Victor Rene.
11.JohnHayward, John Davy Hayward (1905–65), editor and critic: see Biographical Register.
2.JeanetteMcPherrin, Jeanette McPherrin (1911–92), postgraduate student at Scripps College; friend of EH: see Biographical Register.
7.RichardO'Sullivan, Richard O’Sullivan, KC, KSG (1888–1963), barrister, wrote on the Christian origin of the Common Law of England. He was founder of the Sir Thomas More Society.
1.GeorgeSansom, George Sansom (1883–1965), British commercial counsellor in Tokyo, 1926–39. HisSansom, Katherine wife was Katharine Sansom (1883–1998), journalist; author of Living in Tokyo (1937). Knighted in 1935, Sansom was elected in 1947 Knight Grand Cross of the Order of the British Empire. After the war, he became the first Director of the Far Eastern Institute at Columbia University. Works include Japan: A Short Cultural History (1931); History of Japan (3 vols, 1958–64). See Gordon Daniels, ‘Sir George Sansom (1883–1965): Historian and Diplomat’, Britain and Japan 1859–1991: Themes and Personalities, ed. Sir Hugh Cortazzi and Gordon Daniels (1991), 277–88.
1.GeorgeSansom, George Sansom (1883–1965), British commercial counsellor in Tokyo, 1926–39. HisSansom, Katherine wife was Katharine Sansom (1883–1998), journalist; author of Living in Tokyo (1937). Knighted in 1935, Sansom was elected in 1947 Knight Grand Cross of the Order of the British Empire. After the war, he became the first Director of the Far Eastern Institute at Columbia University. Works include Japan: A Short Cultural History (1931); History of Japan (3 vols, 1958–64). See Gordon Daniels, ‘Sir George Sansom (1883–1965): Historian and Diplomat’, Britain and Japan 1859–1991: Themes and Personalities, ed. Sir Hugh Cortazzi and Gordon Daniels (1991), 277–88.